


Being a Ghost Story of Christmas

by torpedo



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: A Muppet Christmas Carol, Alternate Universe - A Christmas Carol Fusion, Charles Dickens - Freeform, Christmas, Ghosts, Holidays, Inspired by A Christmas Carol, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-21
Updated: 2018-12-21
Packaged: 2019-09-24 03:10:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17092946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/torpedo/pseuds/torpedo
Summary: There was a man called Grantaire Scrooge, a drunk miser of forty years. Herein he undergoes a spectacular and ratherhauntingtransformation, one might say.[A Christmas Carol AU, just in time for the holidays.]





	Being a Ghost Story of Christmas

**Author's Note:**

> An analysis of the treatment of the poor and the value of changing yourself at the last minute to meet a noble cause? Sounds like a very Victor Hugo Christmas to me. A forewarning: there is not a terrible amount of Enjolras in this fic. It is a Grantaire story.  
> Shout-out to the incomparable almoststarted for beta-ing this, and also beta-ing my life.  
> (Based upon the novel, primarily, but also various film adaptations, especially A Muppet Christmas Carol, which you should all go watch right now. Also, if THEY can have this AU, why can’t I?)

It was Christmas Eve, and that alone was reason enough to drink.

Grantaire Scrooge, who would have been affectionately known as R by his friends had he any, was a drunk miser of forty years, a cold, disaffected and overtly frank man who clutched what he had to him and demanded every drop that he could squeeze out of life.

He was the sole proprietor of his own firm, R. Scrooge, and that was how he liked it, thank you. Cold and sharp as a January icicle, solitary and isolated as an oyster, and gruff as a badger; his voice was grating and his pronouncements even more so. Oh, he might have been handsome in his youth, but the cold in his heart had frozen his features in a facade that was unnaturally ugly.

He lived a solitary life (never having even a passing friend with whom to stop in the street to chat) and that was how he liked it.

The cold was his constant companion, so he never heated any room if he could avoid it. He was quite immune to the cold; in fact he was immune to most things that might change his mood, unless they served to blacken it.

He was fairly good at finding things to blacken his mood.

At present, tucked in his counting-house, he looked up into the doorway of his office at an unexpected movement. Eponine Jondrette, his only clerk and his sole employee, stood there, stolidly raising an eyebrow.

“Grantaire?” Eponine asked. Her eyes lit upon his flask and frowned. He grimaced, before lifting it and taking a swig in open defiance.

“Out with it, Eponine. What do you want?”

“Well, to be quite honest, I want to know if you’re planning to give me Christmas day off.”

“Off of what?”

“Of  _ work _ , Scrooge, what else could I mean?” She huffed, annoyed. “It’s Christmas day, the children will expect me, and...”

“And?”

“And, well. Frankly, it’s  _ tradition. _ ”

“Tradition?” Grantaire laughed darkly and reached again for his gin. “Such sentimentality hardly becomes you, Ep.” In point of fact, Grantaire was deeply taken aback, not to mention discomfited. Eponine’s harsh pragmatism, her no-nonsense demeanor-- these were things he had come to rely on. It was part of why they worked together so well, why she was so valuable to his enterprise, and to the business of loans and debts.

“It’s custom,  _ sir _ ,” the young woman sniped. “Plus, everyone else is bound to be closed tomorrow, for the holiday. You won’t have anyone to deal with, and can save yourself the coal it takes to heat this place.”

Grantaire looked balefully over at the two coals burning in the fireplace.

“Come on, Grantaire. It’s Christmas.”

“ _ Christmas _ ,” he snorted. “There is a slick trick if I ever saw one.”

“A trick?”

“A conman’s ruse, Miss Jondrette. A humbug.”

“A humbug? What a thing to say.”

“You’ll have your day off, Eponine,” he groused, becoming incensed with every word. “Bah! You’re right enough that there’s no money to be made, all on account of  _ Christmas.  _ A world of fools we find ourselves in, and myself not least of all. A time of paying bills without income, a year older and no richer; a fine way to pick a man’s pocket. I wish a pox upon all who go about with Merry Christmas on their lips!”

“You’re in fine form this evening,” Eponine returned mildly. “You make your Christmas wishes, and I shall make mine. Thank you for the day off.”

“Oh, she thanks me. And I suppose you’d think yourself quite ill-used if I stopped your pay for that day. Does anyone think it theft of me, to pay for a day of no work?” He glowered at her. “No,” he answered himself snottily.

“Christmas only comes once a year.”

Grantaire waved his hand dismissively. “Be here all the earlier the next day, then.”

A visitor rapped upon the door, and Eponine went to let him and the chill December air in. The man who entered was tall, with clean, but simple, well-made clothes; he in whole was friendly and pleasant to behold. He had a book and paper in hand, and he bowed to Grantaire.

“Do I have the pleasure of addressing Mr. Scrooge?” he asked in a mild but becoming voice.

Grantaire frowned. No one ever had pleasure in meeting him; the idea seemed to disconcert him quite a bit.

The gentlemen handed over his credentials. “My name is Combeferre,” he said, smiling. “At this most festive season of the year, thoughts turn to those among us who suffer most greatly at this time. It is more than usually fitting that we should make provisions for their care-- thousands go without necessaries, and hundreds of thousands go without comfort!”

“What has become of the prisons? The Union workhouses? The Tread Mill and the Poor Law?”

Combeferre frowned, lowering his pen. “They are all still operational, sir, I very much regret to inform you.”

“Oh good,” Grantaire cried. “The way you spoke, I believed there were no  _ provisions _ made for the poor.”

Combeferre shook his head. “Yes, well.  Given the time of year, the gentlemen of the group I represent have been going from business to business, that we might furnish some meat and drink for those laboring in such conditions, especially the children, that they might be affected by the… goodness of this...” He trailed off. “Shall I expect that you will contribute nothing?”

“You expect correctly,” Grantaire sneered. “I expect only to be  _ left alone _ . I haven’t the time to make myself merry at Christmas, and I  _ refuse _ to do so for the idle. I already pay to furnish the institutions I have mentioned, and that is costly enough!”

“But many cannot get there,” Combeferre said, aghast, “and given the conditions, many would rather die.”

“Who’s stopping them?” Grantaire cried. “If they want to give up, they can. Decrease the surplus population, if you don’t want to struggle with the rest of us. And besides, I cannot account for these ‘conditions’ of yours-- I know nothing of it.”

“But you  _ could _ know of it.”

“Fine, then say that I won’t!” he cried. “I understand my business, and I leave other men to theirs. Good day!” he dismissed.

As Combeferre went to the door, Eponine stopped him.

“Please allow me to make a small contribution,” she said softly, going to her satchel to fetch a coin or two.

“Eponine!” Grantaire cried, startled. “You can not mean to waste your money in such a wild fashion.” He knew firsthand how much pay she received-- who else could know but him?-- and the fact that she had no less than three younger siblings in her care.

“It’s my money,” she said stolidly, “and I can afford to go hungrier than they can.”

“Bless you,” Combeferre said earnestly, taking the shillings from her and scratching her name down in his ledger. “The children, no doubt, will bless you as well.”

“Ah, yes, the blessings of urchins! How well your fortunes may be,” Grantaire muttered.

Combeferre raised a cold eyebrow at him, smiled once more at Eponine, and excused himself to leave.

At length, the hour of closing the business for the night was at hand. He bade Eponine the best farewell of which he was capable (one might have called it a growl) and swept out of the office. He didn’t stop to watch Eponine lock it up; he could always hear the key, and he always knew she would.

The night was black, and it matched Grantaire’s mood. He took pleasure in little, but the clack of his boots on the cobbles below did serve to craft a pleasing rhythm to pass his walk. He stopped to pass his supper at a dark local tavern, with a great deal of wine as was his wont, and went home to bed down in his gloomy rooms.

He reached the dark, foggy gateway of his yard and approached the pile of a building that he called home.

It’s well you know that Grantaire had a very ordinary door knocker-- that is to say, if you had come across one hundred doors, and you noticed five of the knockers, this would not be one of those you’d noticed. It was a simple craft, in a simple style, which Grantaire had seen every day for nearly twenty years.

It’s also well you know that Grantaire lacked all that was whimsical and fantastical in a person-- or if he had, it was crushed under the all-consuming weight of his cold nature, so subsumed for years that we might as well say it was gone entirely.

Nevertheless, as Grantaire’s eyes adjusted to the dim of the yard, he paused, key in the door, at the sight of his own knocker.

Instead of the knocker, he saw there a gruesome face.

It was not shadowed like all else in the yard, but seemed to glow from within, a low, pulsing light. It cast grave angles in the depths of that face, frozen in a rictus of pain and agony.

The face looked like his own.

He gasped and stumbled back, lost his footing, righted himself, and looked again.

The face was gone.

It would be untrue to say that he was unstartled or untouched by this occurrence, but Grantaire was a man of great suspicion, and when he checked a third time, entering the house at last, and saw no face and nothing on the back of his door either, he cursed mildly at the whole episode and carried on with his life, a trifle more awake, perhaps, but otherwise largely unmoved.

Unmoved, yet he did take his lone candle through all of his rooms, just to check if everything was alright.

If he double-locked his door that night, against his custom, that was no one’s business.

If he saw the face, contorted in pain, in every flicker of the candlelight and every shadow, that was no matter, either.

“Humbug!” he scolded himself, and put himself to sleep.

 

* * *

 

He could not sleep.

He tossed, and turned, and once stood up and paced the room, but nothing seemed to do him any good. He sighed and sat up, staring dismally out into his dismal space.

As he threw his head back against his pillow, his eyes lit upon an ancient bell, hanging from the ceiling, its use long forgotten in the passage of years and owners. To his dismay and horror, that bell began to sway back and forth.

Back and forth, farther and farther until it began to ring.

It rang, louder and louder, and more insistent, until the other bells in the house, the clocks, the door bells, all were chiming and ringing and clanging, the cacophony growing louder and louder until it was nigh unbearable, and then--

With a boom, the window flew open, cold wind crashing through the window.

“A humbug!” Grantaire gritted out. “I won’t believe it!”

His color changed greatly, though, when heavy, clanking, ominous chains crept up, of their own volition, from under his bed and wrapped themselves around his body, pinning him quite unmoveable against the bed.

He struggled against them with a cry, but it was in vain. He looked down. The chain was made of cash boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses, all rendered in steel and linked together, fixing him in place.

Light flashed upon the room for an instant. The curtains of his bed were drawn aside by a hand.

He found himself face to face with a spirit of a very strange mien. Like a child, but also like an old man, or perhaps an old woman-- it had all the grace and purity of both youth and age, all the sincerity and weight of such conditions. Its hair was long and white, but its face had no wrinkle; it seemed diminutive in stature but much in the way of looking through a spyglass, as though shrunk by the perspective of an unearthly veil; its cheeks were rosy as a babe, its arms muscular and capable,  its feet and arms delicate; it held a winter holly and its tunic was decorated with summer flowers. It wore a pure white tunic, with bare arms and legs, and seemed perfectly unaffected by the cold. Light seemed to radiate from it, beautiful and unnerving in equal measure.

Most unsettling of all, when he looked not directly at it, in his periphery it seemed to have wildly different shapes entirely-- first with one leg, then with twenty, first large and lumbering, next a fairy, and so on-- but when looked at straight away, the form was clear.

Despite the weight and sensation of the cold chains against him, despite his clear vision that could well see every detail of the figure floating before him, he was still incredulous, and fought against his senses.

“How now!” Grantaire snapped, caustic even in his alarm. “What do you want with me, eh?”

“Much!” it replied, in a voice soft and gentle, and low, as if from a great distance.

“Who are you?”

“I am Jehan, the Ghost of Christmas Past.”

Grantaire simply stared, at a rare loss of words.

“You don’t believe in me,” observed Jehan.

“I don’t,” Grantaire confessed easily.

“Interesting. What do you understand of reality, beyond your senses?”

“Nothing,” Grantaire answered grudgingly.

“So how can you doubt your senses now?”

Grantaire laughed, but it was a brittle sound. “Because a little thing affects them. A strong drink, a light medicine, an opium den, or even a dinner, taken too late! Yes, I’m quite sure you’re a bit of undigested beef, manifesting in my dreams. There’s more of gravy than of the grave about  _ you _ .”

The spirit smiled gently at him. “Does being smart distract you well, Grantaire? I think your wit has always served you, whether well or for ill.”

Grantaire paled further still, then rallied with a cry. “If you are real, then tell me; why am I bound so? Why have you come here?”

“Because those chains are your own, Grantaire. You forged them in life, and you will wear them in perdition. You made it link by link, yard by yard; girded on your own free will. Is its pattern strange to you? Or is it familiar?”

Grantaire trembled but said nothing.

“When your time comes, and you cross that shining threshold, this chain will be yours to bear. You shall not rest, shall not stop, shall not tarry; you will carry these chains through the fires and walk the steps you should have walked in life, witness the truths you should have witnessed, ceaselessly struggling, an incessant torture of remorse. Your spirit never walked beyond your counting house in life, so your spirit will be condemned to a weary and unwanted journey on the other side, an immortal spirit of torment alone.”

And Grantaire thought, unbidden, of the agonized face of his door knocker, which so resembled his own. “No, no,” Grantaire whispered. “Please spirit, dear Jehan, speak comfort to me!”

“I am meant to speak truths, but one truth may bring you comfort indeed. You have but a single chance to change your fate, Grantaire.” 

“Oh, thank you,” he breathed.

“You will be haunted.”

Grantaire’s face and heart both plummeted. “This is my comfort?”

“You must meet with me, and my two brothers, and listen well to our lessons.”

“Brothers?” he whimpered. “Are they… spirits? Like yourself?”

“Like me, and not,” the spirit giggled. “But you will see. They are the Ghosts of the Present and of that which is Yet to Come”

Within his dark and melancholy rooms, the clock began to chime for one o’clock.

“It is my hour,” Jehan explained briskly. “You may expect my brothers at the bells for two and three precisely. But for now…”

Without so much as a blink, the chains disappeared from around Grantaire. He bolted upright, clambered from the bed, reaching for his dressing gown. The relief of being without his chains was palpable, and his very breaths came in gasps.

“Christmas Past?” Grantaire said eventually. “Long Past?”

“No. Your past.”

“Why have you come?”

“Your welfare!” Jehan cried.

“Much obliged, but a good night's sleep may well provide---”

“Very well, then,” Jehan replied, a touch irritable. “Your reclamation. Come with me, Grantaire.”

The spirit put out its strong hand and grabbed his arm. The force of that hold was irresistible, and Grantaire found himself being led along without another complaint, in mute shock as they headed for the window.

Jehan pulled him through the window, and Grantaire, who was on the cusp of breaking his silence to point out his mortality, found himself stumbling onto an open country road.

The city had vanished.

So too had the night; it was a bright, clear winter’s day.

“God have mercy,” Grantaire whispered, casting his eyes about in wonder. “I was born here. Spirit, this is where I was raised!”

Jehan said nothing as Grantaire felt something come over him, an emotion born of a thousand emotions. Sights and smells and sounds, a thousand little pleasures and memories and heartbreaks, long forgotten, suddenly recalled!

Jehan smiled. “Dry your eyes, Grantaire,” he said, for Grantaire indeed had become quite misty, “and follow me. Or, do you know the way?”

“Know it? I could lead you blindfolded!”

“Strange, that you’ve forgotten it until now,” Jehan mused.

They walked on together, and Grantaire recognized every landmark, every tree and plant, and most of the faces he saw and the voices he heard. Jehan explained that they could not hear him, for these were but the shades of what had been.

Before long, they came to a deserted schoolhouse in great disrepair. Grantaire laughed to see it, and then all at once he stopped.

“Spirit, I do not wish to see.”

“The school house is not entirely empty, is it?” Jehan asked. “There is one boy, neglected by his friends, brilliant in all respects, but lonely.”

Grantaire sighed. “Have on with it, then,” he grumbled, and they entered the house.

A lone, slightly melancholy lad was sitting in the room of empty, bare desks, reading quietly beside the fire. Grantaire could not help himself, and he wept a bit, to see himself in such a state.

“When the other children would talk and dream of going home for Christmas,” he confessed quietly, “I would languish so.”

“I know.”

“Oh, but the stories!” Grantaire laughed through his tears. “I had such travels of my own, spirit, that the others might have envied. Christmas after Christmas, with Ali Baba, and the twins Valentine and Orson, and oh, you know, the traveler, Robinson Crusoe-- how well Robinson and I fared on that island, and oh, the things we built!”

Had any business partner seen Grantaire in that moment, reliving his childhood stories in tears and laughter, they would not have recognized him at all.

“What is it, Grantaire?” Jehan asked, reading his face.

“It’s nothing. I only-- I saw some child singing carols on the street yesterday. I only thought, I wish I had given him something.”

Jehan smiled. “Let’s see another Christmas!

At once the Grantaire of memory grew larger as the room about them grew dirtier and more broken. A man stood before him, with a serious face and kind eyes, broad shoulders that seemed more suited to a blacksmith than a teacher, but a teacher he was.

“My old headmaster, Jean ValJean!” Grantaire cried, grasping the spirit’s arm. “That man taught me my greatest lessons. He took me under his wing, Jehan, and taught me much about surviving in this cruel world.”

“The world is frequently unkind, Grantaire,” ValJean was saying to the young Grantaire, “but it isn’t without opportunity, if you have an eye to see it.”

“Yes, headmaster.”

“People will say you come from nothing, Young Scrooge, and they will be right. But every house is built upon a foundation-- if you start with an empty yard, then you must be all the more careful in laying your stones. But you will undoubtedly have a stronger house for your work, than those who only learn to add to their privileges. Do you see what I mean, Grantaire?”

“I think I do, headmaster.”

“Well, you’ve always been a smart lad,” ValJean sighed, “so I can only hope that’s true. I’ve matched you with a business looking for an apprentice, Grantaire, and I believe you have the head for it.”

Grantaire smiled broadly. “I’ll make you proud, sir.”

“I’ve no doubt of that, Grantaire.”

The scene shifted again, and Grantaire’s shade aged again. 

The elder Grantaire Scrooge gasped.

“Another Christmas, Jehan? This is Joly’s business! I was apprenticed here! Oh, good Joly, jolly Joly, bless his heart, and bless this memory!”

“It is your own,” Jehan observed, amused. “You could have blessed it any time you wished.”

Grantaire waved at the spirit impatiently, leaning in to hear the conversation.

The aforementioned Joly, seated at his high desk, put down his pen and glanced at the clock. Upon reading seven o’clock, he laughed, bright and gay, a warm, catching, jovial laugh.

“Oy! Grantaire! Bossuet!”

Scrooge’s former self, now a grown and charming young man, approached with another young man, balding early but merry.

“That’s Lesgle Bossuet, to be sure!” said Grantaire to Jehan. “The Eagle, we used to call him, a pun on his given name!”

“You’ve always been a fan of wordplay,” Jehan pointed out. “Even in your business title today.”

“It’s true, it’s true, I confess it; I was a wit and a dullard all at once. Oh, Bossuet, he was a bit attached to me, spirit, and no mistake. I wondered at that time if he fell in love with everyone he met. Poor, poor unlucky Lesgle!”

“Now, then, chaps,” Joly was saying, it’s seven o’clock on Christmas Eve.  _ Christmas _ , Grantaire!  _ Christmas _ , Bossuet!” he trilled. “There’s to be no more work today, I say! Let’s shutter this place up at once! Hilly-ho, let’s clear this place in the center, we must have room to dance!” He stood up to help them, grasping his cane.

“Now now,” young Grantaire was saying with a laugh, “leave that to us, and tend your maladies. We’ll clear the furniture, and you save that energy for your dancing.”

“Ah, Grantaire,” Joly replied, “you are charm and pragmatism combined. What would I do without your pessimism to temper my gaiety?”

“Languish,” Grantaire laughed, “and then lose all your money.” The other clerks joined in clearing the room to make it ready for merriment. It was done in a minute. They swept the floor, trimmed the lights, stoked the fires, and made a very nice ballroom out of a clerk’s office in less than fifteen minutes, all told. Joly sent out the youngest page with his address book, and before long, Joly’s various friends, families, and acquaintances, as well as townsfolk who heard they would be welcome, and a fiddler the page had grabbed from the street, set to creating a very merry Christmas Eve indeed.

There were more dances, and much conversation, food appeared in stages, first a roast, then a stew, then diverse other things too appeared and were snatched up in turn, beer and wine came and went, as did people and games. Grantaire watched the memory at almost double speed, as though the spirit wanted to speed through the merriment to find something in particular.

“I don’t understand,” Grantaire confessed to Jehan, “what purpose you can have in showing me a Christmas party.”

“A small gesture on Joly’s part so many people so much gratitude. But be patient, please,” Jehan replied. “It isn’t necessarily the party itself that we must see.”

Time seemed to resume its regular pace, and then--

“Grantaire!” Joly called. 

“Yes?” he answered. Jehan elbowed him.

“He doesn’t mean  _ you _ . He can’t see you, remember?”

“Ah. Yes.”

They watched as the more youthful Grantaire left a laughing group of friends, color high in his cheeks, to make his way over to where Joly waited.

Where Joly waited with a stranger.

“Oh, no,” the true Grantaire moaned. “Oh, no, not this. Oh, please, spirit, have mercy. I don’t want to see.”

“You remember this meeting, then?”

“Remember?” he whispered. “Oh, spirit. I have spent nearly twenty years trying to forget.”

“Grantaire, meet Enjolras!” Joly cried. “He’s a dear family friend of about your age, a wit to challenge yours, I have no doubt!”

Grantaire watched on in horror as young Grantaire struggled to form words. Enjolras in his memory’s form was even more beautiful than Grantaire feared, more beautiful than he haunted in his dreams. His hair shone gold in the firelight, his eyes a cornflower blue that seemed impossible. Though a man grown, he had the delicacy and grace of a schoolboy, a youthful beauty that seemed loathe to leave him despite his years. His full lips, his bright complexion, his slender form-- he had all the beauty and softness of a seventeen-year-old girl, and his gaze had all the weight and steel of a locomotive.

“I’ve heard much about you,” Enjolras said, almost solemnly, and young Grantaire started, and became himself at last.

“I cannot say the same, I’m afraid, but I believe that is a good thing.”

“A good thing?” Enjolras frowned.

“Naturally! I would then have to scorn that friend for a liar and a sneak, for I do believe no words could do you justice.” He took Enjolras’ hand and raised it slowly to his lips, watching with pleasure as pink erupted on Enjolras’ face. “It is a genuine pleasure to meet you, I assure you.”

“And I you,” Enjolras stammered automatically.

“So forward!” the true Grantaire cried in mortification to Jehan. “What cheek I had.”

“Such is youth,” Jehan hummed. “It seemed well received.”

“Indeed it did; it bolstered me in ways I cannot express. I think I was not whole until this night. The young man unmade me, Spirit. His passion was unparalleled in the mortal realm. I should never have touched that hand.”

“He was quite taken with your quickness and wit,” Jehan continued, with the authority of someone who has seen every Christmas. “You loved each other deeply.”

“We did. We fell headily in love, like fools.”

“Fools? You bonded over the state of the world, and your desire to change it!”

“Exactly. To change the world-- who were we?” Grantaire shook his head. “Who was he?”

The very exasperated Ghost of Christmas Past huffed. “My time grows short.”

At once their locale changed again.

“No more!” Grantaire cried, looking about the familiar scene desperately. “No more. I don’t wish to see it; show me no more!”

Jehan said nothing.

Once again, Grantaire saw himself. He was older now, in the prime of life. His face had not the harsh rigidity of later years, but something had begun to wear at him. There was an eager, greedy glint in his eye, showing the passion that had taken root there, the coldness that would overtake him. The true Grantaire staggered to see it, so contrasted with the younger version of moments before.   


He was not alone, but sat beside fair Enjolras, dressed all in black. He had aged too, but much better; time had sharpened the angles of his face and strengthened his jaw. In his eyes there was a change also: where Grantaire had a barely concealed greed lurking, Enjolras’ rage sparkled in the light that shone from Jehan. 

“I can see it matters little to you,” Enjolras said in a voice low with contained fury, “as much does these days.”

“Enjolras, what have I done to earn your anger now?”   


“It cannot continue;  _ I _ cannot continue. You’ve fallen for another, and if it can cheer and comfort you in time to come,  I have no just cause to grieve, do I?”   


“Who displaced you?” he rejoined.   


“A golden one.”   


Grantaire laughed. “None is more golden than you, dear Phoebus.”

“I speak of gold in its purest form, Grantaire.”   


The younger Scrooge's eyes narrowed, and he too demonstrated the capacity for anger. “Is this your infamous sympathy, then, Apollo? I must say I find it underwhelming. Scorn, he gives me, when I offer security.”

“You’ve become obsessed with money. It consumes you.”

“The world is harsh, Enjolras. No, it is a nightmare. And there is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty!”   


“You fear the world too much,” he answered, resigned. “All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance of its sordid reproach. I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until your master, Gain, engrossed you. Have I not?”   


“What then?” he retorted. “Even if I have grown so much wiser--”

“Wiser! Your nobler aims are what brought us together!”

“So what then? I am not changed towards you.”   


Enjolras stared at him, and then shook his head, in a way we might call sad had it had less strength.   


“Am I?”   


“Our contract,” Enjolras all but spat, “is an old one. It was made when we were both poor and content to be so, until, in good season, we could improve our worldly fortune, and then improve the world around us. You are changed. When it was made, you were another man.”   


“I was a boy,” he said impatiently.   


“You admit freely that you have changed. The promises made when we were of one mind are a prison when our hearts are rent; I will not hold you condemned.”   


“Have I ever sought release?”   


“Not in words.”   


“In what, then?”   


“In the entirety of your  _ nature _ , Grantaire! In every part of you that valued me, and valued the things we stood for!”

“You conjecture,” Grantaire said dismissively. “You are wild. Here there is no action of mine.”

“You promised we would be together as soon you could secure money for a sort of wedding, such as we could have. When you had enough, you then wanted to wait until we had enough for a house. Then unavoidable pitfalls. Then for our future. ‘In time,’ you told me, ‘in time we will seek the future we talked about.’ Over and over I’ve heard it, and I’m tired.” He runs a hand through his golden curls, frown creasing his forehead. “I’m  _ tired _ , Grantaire, of pretending you are ever joining me. I am tired of packing myself away for you, of closing off the parts of me that are called to action, to wait for a man who loves me no longer.”   


Grantaire seemed to yield to the justice of this supposition, in spite of himself. But he said with a struggle, “You think not.”   


“I would gladly think otherwise if I could,” Enjolras answered, “Do you ever intend to help me make this a better world?”

“A better-- Enjolras, we are not children. Am I not enough?”

Enjolras stood then, face blank in anger. “If I had you,” he gritted out, “I might be able to answer that.”

“I am yours,” Grantaire replied, numbly, as if by rote memory.

Enjolras paused, turned to look back at him sadly. “You were, once. May you be happy in the life you have chosen.”   


Enjolras walked away then. Grantaire lost Enjolras on this Christmas; it was the last time Grantaire ever saw him.   


“Spirit!” said Grantaire, “show me no more! Why do you delight in torturing me?”

“Torture isn’t my aim, my friend. These are simply the shades of what has been,” Jehan rejoined softly, and as he said it, his light began to dim slightly, and he seemed to be disappearing from view. “Remember them, and remember me!”

And Grantaire found himself back in his rooms as last, the dark, quiet, gloomy home he called his own, and he fell upon the covers as if in a faint, and slept hard.

 

* * *

 

The clock rang for two o’clock, and Grantaire sat bolt upright in bed.

He had already experienced such a number of sad and strange things that he was quite prepared for anything, from a cockroach to an elephant, but what Grantaire was not prepared for was nothing at all.

He shook like a leaf, trembling in his own bed, and waited.

Nothing happened.

After about fifteen minutes, he grew weary of waiting, and leapt up from his bed.

All at once there was an eerie light, but it came from without. Upon searching Grantaire determined it was coming from the adjoining room and, with sudden vigor, decided he might as well get it over with and go find out just what was in store for him. On his way, he grabbed his flask, clutching it to his chest.

He pushed through the door and gaped in open astonishment.

It was his room, to be sure, but it was nigh unrecognizable. 

Every inch of the walls and ceilings were so covered in green growth and glistening berries that it looked like a forest in truth, a grove of holly, mistletoe, and ivy. The fireplace roared and crackled with a great, merry fire that it hadn’t known in any of Grantaire’s years there. Heaped upon the floor, as if to form a great throne, was every manner of festive holiday food: poultry, great joints of meat, mince-pies, puddings, every fruit and vegetable, every fixing one might desire, on and on.

Seated upon this unusual throne was a giant of a man, jolly in demeanor, glorious and resplendent to see. He bore a glowing torch and shined it on Grantaire as he crept through the door.

“Come in!” exclaimed the Ghost, “and know me better, man!”   


Grantaire hung his head before the spirit, though his eyes were clear and kind. This was not the Grantaire we have come to know, no dogged wretch with a cold, detached stare.   


“I am Courfeyrac, the Ghost of Christmas Present,” said the Spirit. “Look at me!”   


Grantaire did so, grudgingly. Courfeyrac was clothed in a vast green robe, lined with white fur, worn so loosely that his fine, muscled chest was bare in the torchlight.  His feet were also bare, and he wore no hat; just a wreath of holly and ivy, trailing glittering icicles around his head. He had thick curly hair, worn long and unbound, free as his entire being seemed to be. He seemed designed to laugh, and that he loved his design.

“There are better ways to become merry,” Courfeyrac said, gesturing to Grantaire’s flask.

He dropped it at once. “I, I--- yes. Yes, of course. That is not why I was-- I mean, I am seldom merry, and that isn’t my… goal.” He trailed off lamely, in awe.

“You’ve never seen the likes of me!” Courfeyrac cried.

“I have not,” Grantaire answered, simply.

The Ghost made a great, booming laugh at that. “But surely you’ve seen my siblings!”

“I think I would remember meeting someone like you,” Grantaire quipped, and he smiled at Courfeyrac’s heartfelt laugh. “Have you many brothers and sisters?”

“Almost two thousand, and still counting! There is a Christmas every year, you know.”

“Imagine the grocery bills!” Grantaire cried. Courfeyrac laughed again, in an unbridled way that was infectious. There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good-humour. 

“Spirit, please conduct me where you will. I have traveled far already, and the lessons I’ve learned are already working upon me.” Grantaire shrugged, self-deprecating. “I will go where and when you take me.”

“The When is mighty easy!” Courfeyrac rejoined. “The Where may take some effort. Touch my robe, and let’s see how much you can learn!”

Grantaire did so, smiling a little.

The room vanished, but the world did not; they stood in the middle of the city street on Christmas morning. The weather was strict but not severe, people walked quickly from place to place, but children still scampered happily, building snowmen and jumping into snow drifts before hurrying inside. Men and women chatted in very brief passing, shoveling snow from sidewalks and wishing each other a brisk but earnest, “Merry Christmas!” at every opportunity.

The houses appeared black, the snow at their feet was dingy and often brown, the sky was gray and oppressive. Yet despite this, there managed to be an air of cheer and hope.

It was there in the snowball fights, not only thrown by children; it was in the gold and gleaming shop windows; it was in the eyes of everyone who passed.

When a quarrel cropped up near them, Courfeyrac stepped over and touched each person on the shoulder, and they immediately calmed with good graces all around. Courfeyrac smiled at Grantaire.

“It is a shame to quarrel upon Christmas Day,” he said with a wink.

Grantaire blinked at him suddenly. “Aren’t you… smaller than you were before?”

Courfeyrac laughed uproariously. “Christmas Present may change, but the spirit will adapt and remain the same!”

Courfeyrac led him through town until they stood at a door-- one Grantaire did not recognize, to what would soon be his shame. They entered.

Within, there were two young girls, perhaps of ages eight and twelve. They were dressed poorly, in simple, rough dresses, but they had been gaily decorated in green and red ribbons, cheaply bought but lovingly adorned, and their dresses made a brave and pretty impression all the same. The younger was chattering incessantly to the older, going on about such things a child of her age will. The elder sister smiled and nodded, tending something boiling on a stove, with a touch of annoyance that was overtaken by her good will; each time she caught sight of her sister, all in ribbons and face glowing, she smiled anew, and asked a cheeky question to keep her sister chatting.

“Where are their parents?” Grantaire fussed. “A child of twelve, cooking over a flame in an unattended home?”

Courfeyrac shushed him.

“Cosette, where is Eponine?” the younger interrupted. “And Gavroche?”

“They’ll be back soon, Azelma,” the older smiled, “don’t worry. Can you help me with setting the table?”

Before she had even gathered up her supplies, Eponine appeared, with a young man upon her shoulder, his threadbare clothes darned up and brushed, to look seasonable. 

“Eponine! Gavroche!” The young girls cried, rushing to take Gavroche from her shoulder, to take her coat and scarf and hang them, to tell them of giant geese and the potatoes and to thank her for the ribbons. Eponine, laughing, let herself be drawn into the house, stopping only to fetch a crutch from the wall and give it to Gavroche, that he might have full use of the house and independence. Cosette smiled up at her older sister as Eponine watched Gavroche rocket about the house on his crutch, too light and small for his age.

“How was Gavroche at market?”

“Good as gold, or better even,” Eponine demurred, and Grantaire shook himself, alarmed to see her so moved. It felt like intruding on her privacy, and he wanted to look away. Courfeyrac, catching his eye, shook his head slightly and gestured for him to watch the exchange. “Can you believe his nerve? He told me, coming home, that he hoped people were staring.”

“Did he?” Cosette gasped.

“He did,” Eponine said, smiling a touch sadly. “But then he said he wanted people to see him, so they could be grateful for what they have, and think about the miracles of Christmas.”

“A remarkable child,” Grantaire breathed, and Courfeyrac nodded sagely.

Between the four of them, a meager feast was prepared: a small goose, some boiled potatoes, gravy, and a pudding, with some lemons and spices boiled in water to serve as their punch. Merrily this tiny family prepared it all, as if unaware of the lack.

“A scant Christmas feast,” Grantaire observed.

“But very much appreciated!” Courfeyrac returned.

They gathered their meal gladly upon the table, said grace, and Eponine herself carved the goose, which erupted with stuffing when cut, causing the children to cry out.

“Speech, speech!” the children cried.

Eponine stood, raising her mug high with a sigh. “I don’t know much of churches or Christ, but I have always thought of the Christmas season as a good; a kind, forgiving, charitable pleasant time. It seems as though it is the one time of year when we can look out into a crowd and see “us” instead of “others”, and that by itself is worth celebrating. A Merry Christmas to us all!”

They all toasted appreciatively.

“God bless us, every one,” Gavroche replied, and they all laughed toasting again. “Is there more?”

“A bit, Gav,” Cossette said “Would you like it?”

“No, it’s just that Azelma’s got the small cup today, so she should be served again. It’s only fair!” 

“Such charity,” Grantaire said. “Is it possible, when they all have so little?”

“Of course it is, but there’s no doubt he’s exceptional,” Courfeyrac answered sadly. “A stunning bright boy who would change the world, if he weren't so badly sick.”

Grantaire paled at the look on the Spirit’s face, as he rose to leave and beckoned Grantaire to follow.

“I didn’t know she had a sick brother, a crippled child!” Grantaire said desperately, unprovoked.

“Well, you didn’t think to ask, did you?” Courfeyrac returned tartly.

“What of the boy, spirit?” he begs. “What of that excellent lad?”

“I’m the Ghost of the Present only, but I see this much: a vacant seat in the chimney corner, and a crutch without an owner. If these conditions do not change, the boy will die.”

“Oh, no! Not Gavroche! Spirit, please say he will be spared.”

“If they want to give up, they can,” Courfeyrac said in a voice not his own. “Decrease the surplus population, if you don’t want to struggle with the rest of us.”

Grantaire hung his head in shame. “I have no excuse. With all I’ve learned of the unknowable ever after, I see myself for the fool I am. God must rail to see the ant on the leaf, espousing about his brothers starving in the dust.”

Eponine’s family was ten times merrier than he could have guessed, and twenty times more pitiful.

“I should toast, I suppose, Grantaire Scrooge, the founder of this feast,” Eponine said, and Grantaire looked up in surprise.

The children stared at her in mute shock.

“What?” she said gruffly. “I  _ should _ .”

“That old ogre?” Azelma cried, before Cosette shushed her.

“Now, now,” Eponine said fairly, “that will never do. True, the man has his faults, but he’s a comical old fellow, if the truth be told. His offences carry their own punishment, and I have nothing to say against him. His wealth is of no use to him. He doesn’t do any good with it. He doesn’t make himself comfortable with it. Remember this, my loves: Who suffers by his ill whims? Himself, always. I couldn’t be angry with him if I tried. I am sorry for him, in truth.”

“Is his avarice forgivable?” Cosette asked quietly, gesturing about their home.

“Everything is forgivable,” Eponine said eventually, “on Christmas Day.”

Grantaire followed Courfeyrac with a thoughtful and despairing heart.

By this time the streets were dark, and colder still. The flickering of fires through open windows was lovely, though, and the happy carousing of the voices within were inspirational. Even the lamplighter in the street was jolly, joking to one passing family that he was spreading Christmas cheer as far as he could.

“See how the people know me!” Courfeyrac cried gaily. “How is it that you do not?”

“Courfeyrac,” Grantaire said with a start, “are you grown older?”

“I am,” he answered breezily. “My kind are not long upon this Earth, you know.”

“Christmas Present! Just one day! Oh, no! Oh, my dear Courfeyrac, I have much to learn from you yet. Don’t go!”

Courfeyrac laughed, hearty as always. “I’m afraid I must, in fact! Farewell, Grantaire! Look for my brother, Javert, and learn your lessons well!”

A clock, somewhere, struck three o’clock, and Courfeyrac faded with a merry smile. He turned to mist, and all turned to mist.

And a figure approached Grantaire from the darkness.

He beheld a solemn Phantom, coming, imperious, like the very mist along the ground, grave, silent, and slow.  It was tall and stately; the lines of his face were harsh, and his gaze was rigid and unyielding. When the phantom came near him, Grantaire bent down upon his knee; the spirit’s very air carried with it a sense of duty, gloom, and mystery. Its mysterious presence filled him with a solemn dread, but he knew no more, for the Spirit neither spoke nor moved.   


“I am in the presence of Javert, the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come?” Grantaire whispered.   


The Spirit answered not, but pointed onward with its hand.   


“Do you mean to show me shadows of the things that have not happened, or just the way to the grocery?” Grantaire sniped weakly.

Javert said nothing, hand still raised in a perfect lack of animation.

Grantaire’s eyes slipped away from him, as though unwilling to linger on him for long. “I apologize. It has been a time of great change for me. Will you show me what will occur?”   


Javert’s head contracted downward in curt, grave nod, and that was the only answer he received.

Grantaire was as used to ghosts as it was possible to be at this time, but even so, in the presence of this dark and brooding specter, his legs shook, his jaw quaked, and his very fingers shivered. He found himself quite unable to walk.

The Spirit paused a moment, noticing his condition and giving him time to recover.   


But Grantaire was all the worse for this. It thrilled him with a vague uncertain horror, to be so well understood by this unspeaking, black-eyed phantom.   


“Ghost of the Future! I fear you more than any specter I have seen. But I know your purpose is my betterment, and I have much to learn from you, so I am prepared to bear you company, and do it with a thankful heart. Won’t you speak?”   


It gave him no reply. The hand was pointed straight before them.   


“Fine!” Grantaire cried. “Lead on! The night is waning fast, and I am at your disposal!”   


The Phantom moved away from him, seeming more to float than take steps. The city seemed to spring up all around them-- amongst the merchants; tinkling along with pockets full, conversing in groups, looking at their watches, trifling with their possessions, and so on. Grantaire was well familiar with these activities.   


Javert stopped beside one little knot of businessmen and turned his burning, inscrutable gaze on Grantaire. Shivering, Grantaire approached to hear them.

“No, I don’t know much about it, either way. I only know he’s dead,” one man was saying.   


“When did he die?” inquired another.   


“Last night, I believe.”   


“I wonder what got him?” asked a third. “I thought he’d never die.”   


“I’d like to know what he’s done with all his money,” said a fourth man, red-faced in the cold.   


“I haven’t heard,” said the first again, stifling another yawn. “He hasn’t left it to me, I can tell you that much!”   


A general laugh went about the group.

“Well. It’s likely to be a very cheap funeral,” said the same speaker; “for upon my life I don’t know of anybody to go to it.”   


“I don’t mind going,” the red-faced man said, to general surprise, “...if a lunch is provided!”   


Another laugh.   


Speakers and listeners strolled away, and mixed with other groups. Grantaire looked to the Phantom of Javert, curious. “I knew some of these men, spirit, but why are we listening to them chat?”

Javert made no answer, but he strode silently to another gaggle of men. Perplexed but willing, Grantaire followed him.   


“I know these men, too!” Grantaire observed to Javert. “Know them well, in fact.” They were important, wealthy men of business; and he had made a point always of standing well in their esteem, from a business perspective.   


“How are you?” said one.   


“How are you?” returned the other.   


“Well!” said the first. “The devil has got his own at last, hey?”   


“So I am told,” returned the second. “Cold, isn’t it?”   


“Seasonable for Christmas time. Good morning!”   


Not another word. That was their meeting, their conversation, and their parting.

Grantaire confessed surprise to himself, at being shown interactions so trivial, but he felt they must have had a purpose, so he thought hard on them. He couldn’t think of anyone connected to himself that these comments could coincide with, but he could not doubt that the spirits had some latent moral for his own improvement in everything they did. He resolved to treasure up every word he heard and everything he saw; most especially he meant to observe the shadow of himself when it appeared, for he had an inkling that his future self’s conduct would give him the clue he missed, and all would become clear.   


He looked around for himself, for this was the right time of day and the right place to find him; but he was not surprised to find himself missing. He had been considering a change of life throughout this adventure and hoped he saw the new resolutions playing out in his absence from the scene.   


He shook himself and glanced at the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. His dark, empty eyes seemed to stare at him keenly, and once again Grantaire felt that the spirit saw much more of him than was plainly visible. It made him shudder, suddenly cold.   


Javert led him away, to a part of the town he knew only by repute. The houses, the shops, the streets, and the people were all dirty, narrow, rough, and unseemly. The whole quarter reeked with crime, with filth, and with misery.   


Javert led him to a low-browed shop of scraps and scrounging, where every manner of bizarre thing was scattered about. Sitting in among the wares by a charcoal stove was a long-haired rascal of a young age, looking every bit as dingy and containing just as many dark secrets as the items in his shop.   


A woman with a heavy bundle came into this shop, and Grantaire and Javert snuck in behind her. Two more people a followed, a man and a woman. The three guests looked shocked to see each other, and they burst into great peals of laughter.

“The laundress, and the man from the graveyard!” the first woman crowed. “Of course!”

The other woman cackled. “An’ his charwoman, innit? What timing we ‘ave!”

“So. You’re all back from the house of sadness, I see,” the man who owned the shop growled, leaning forward eagerly.    


“Sad?” the laundrette cried. “Sad that he didn't die years ago, the old skinflint.”   


“Hear! Hear!” the other two chanted.   


“What do you got for Montparnasse, eh?” he said in a voice like an oil slick. “What do you got for me to remember him by?”

“Open that bundle, Montparnasse,” the man from the graveyard said, handing it over. It was not extensive: a seal or two, a pencil-case, and a brooch of no great value, were all. They were severally examined and appraised by Montparnasse, who chalked the sums he was disposed to give for each upon the wall.

“Well, I got these collar buttons from his dresser. Mother-of-pearl!” the charwoman cried.   


“Not real mother-of-pearl, but I always dote on ladies,” Montparnasse replied, chalking her total onto the wall next.   


“I got his bed curtains. Very fine damask!” the laundress shouted in glee.   


“Oh. Very cheap damask, but worth a few coins.”   


“And I've got his blankets!”   


“His blankets? They're still warm! I don't pay extra for the warmth, you know!”   


“You should,” she said. “It's the only warmth he ever had!”

“Oh, and his coat!” the man cried, reaching into his bag. “They were like to bury him in it, and I says, not bloody likely!”

Grantaire listened on in horror and revulsion. “Javert!” said Grantaire, shuddering from head to foot. “I understand you perfectly. This unhappy man might as well be me. My life tends that way, now!”   


And suddenly he fell back in great alarm, for the scene had changed once more. He was in a dark room, bare, stripped of possessions. He almost touched a bed: bare, uncurtained, upon which something lay, covered by a sheet, something which he could not see but could not avoid seeing.

It was the body of a man.   


Grantaire glanced at Javert, standing just behind him. The ghost lifted one arm, imperious, and pointed at where the head should lie.

With one touch, he could shift aside the sheet and see what face lay beneath it. What was so strange, so bizarre, was that he  _ wanted _ to. He wanted to see the form behind that sheet. But he wanted just as much to never do so.   


“If this man could be raised up now, what would be his foremost thoughts?” Grantaire whispered. “Avarice, hard-dealing, griping cares? They have brought him to a rich end, truly!”

In that vacant room, with no man, no child, no neighbor, no single person to remember that he had been kind, that he had been  _ theirs _ \-- there was nothing but silence, and the sound of scurrying in the walls, rats, possibly.

The thought of rodents, desperate to get into this place of death, stole the heart from inside him.   


“Javert!” he said, somehow in a screaming whisper. “This is a fearful place. In leaving it, I shall not leave its lesson, I swear to you. Let us go!”   


Still the Ghost pointed with an unmoved finger to the head.   


“I understand you,” Grantaire returned, all urgency. “I really get it, and I would do it, if I could. But I have not the power, Javert. I have not the power to move that sheet. Please.”

Silence.

“Do you think I don’t recognize my own profile?” he snarled his whisper. “I tell you, your lesson is well-received.  _ Please. _ ”   


Again it looked upon him, gray eyes unblinking and so blank.

“There must be someone in this town,” he begged, “who feels emotion because of this death. Please, please, show me that person!”   


Javert narrowed his eyes, the first twisting of any of his features, before he snapped his fingers and revealed a room by daylight, where a mother and her children were.   


Anxiously, she paced before the doorway, glancing out the window and at the clock in a nervous energy.

A knock was heard at the door.   


Her husband, with a face careworn and dejected despite its youth, had a curious expression upon that face: abject delight mingling with shame, both of which he suppressed with a struggle.

“Is it good?” his wife said, clutching his shoulders, “or bad?”   


“Bad,” he answered, carefully. He seemed almost embarrassed.   


“We are quite ruined?”   


“No. There is hope yet.”

She gasped all at once. “You aren’t making sense. Will he relent? Nothing is past hope, if such a miracle has happened.”   


“He is past relenting,” said her husband. “Grantaire Scrooge is dead.”   


She immediately expressed her gratitude to the almighty, and in the next breath she prayed forgiveness for her cruelty. Her gratitude, though, was profound.   


“I had heard he was sick, but he was dying.”   


“To whom will our debt be transferred?”   


“I don’t know. But before that time we shall be ready with the money; and even if not, can you imagine a creditor exists who is  _ more _ cruel and ruthless? Oh, my dear! Does your heart feel lighter?”   


The children’s faces, hushed and clustered round to hear what they so little understood, were bright. The whole family rang with happiness-- was this the only emotion the Ghost could procure over his death? Grantaire’s heart pounded in his chest.

“Let me see some tenderness connected with a death,” pleaded Grantaire. “Is such a thing possible?”   


With a sweeping gesture, that merciless Ghost conducted him through several streets familiar to his feet. They entered Eponine’s, Grantaire for the second time, and found the two sisters seated round the fire.   


Quiet. Very quiet. The chattering girls of the previous Christmas were as still as statues in one corner.“

The older sister, Cosette, laid her needlework upon the table, and put her hand up to her face.   


“The color hurts my eyes,” she said, voice catching.

“Oh, no,” Grantaire whispered.   


“They’re better now again,” she said after a moment, smiling at her younger sister, Azelma, whose lively face was shocking still, dewy at the corners of her eyes. “The candlelight makes them weak, and I wouldn’t want Ep to see me with weak eyes, right?”   


“She’ll be home soon,” Azelma agreed faintly.  “But I think she has walked a little slower than before, these few last evenings.”   


They were very quiet again. At last she said, and in a steady, cheerful voice, that only faltered once:   


“I know she—I have known her to carry little Gav upon her shoulder quite quickly at times!”   


“And so have I,” cried Azelma. “Often.”   


“But he was very light to carry,” she resumed, intent upon her work, “so it was no trouble: no trouble.”

They heard Eponine on the steps without and hurried to meet her, with embraces and a hot cup of tea on the hob.

Azelma, quite beside herself, suddenly burst out, “Oh, don’t be grieved, Eponine!” and ran into her arms.   


Eponine was almost cheerful with them, and spoke pleasantly to both. She praised the industry of their house work.

“They’ll be done long before Sunday,” she said gently.   


“Sunday! You went today?” Azelma asked.   


“Yes. I wish you all could have gone. It is such a green little place! But you’ll see it often. I promised him that we would walk there on a Sunday.” She broke down all at once. “Oh, little Gavroche!” she cried.

She couldn’t help it.

Her younger sisters comforted her for a while, and when she was quite in control of herself once more, they drew about the fire.   


“It’s all right, girls,” Eponine said, stroking their hair in turn. “Life is made of times we say hello as well as times we say goodbye. But no matter what happens, I know none of us will forget Gav, or this first parting that there was in our little family.”   


“Never!” the younger sisters promised.   


“Oh, Spirit! How can we endure it?” Grantaire languished. “Must there be a Christmas like this? What more can you show me? What other horrors can you possibly wreak?”

The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come dragged him on, though the When eluded him -- indeed, there seemed no order in these latter visions, save that they were in the Future-- and transported him suddenly to an iron gate. He paused to look round before entering.

A churchyard. 

“Here, then; the wretched man who we are pretending not to know lies underneath the ground. Am I correct?”

Javert stood among the graves, pointing in his dark, imperious way at one in particular. Trembling, he approached. 

“Before I draw nearer,” said Grantaire, “answer me one question. Are these the shadows of the things that will be, or are they shadows of things that may be, only?”

Still the Ghost pointed downward to the grave by which it stood.

“Do you think I don’t understand? I do! But you wouldn’t show me this if I couldn’t change it! That is my stone, I know it well! Why do you persist in making me look?”

The Spirit was immovable as ever.

Grantaire crept towards it, shaking, though he knew not why-- he knew what it would say, that Grantaire was dead, that he was despised. What terror could remain?

He followed the finger and read upon the stone of the neglected grave.

 

Enjolras.

 

He cried out and fell upon his knees.

“Enjolras!” he gasped. “Dead!  _ This year?! _ How?”

The spirit would not answer.

“No, Javert! Oh no, no! There is no torment you could do to hurt me worse than this name, here. Why would you show me this?”

The finger still was there.

“Spirit!” he begged. “He’s no older than I! He’s too young! What madness could befall him?”

Grantaire sobbed, clutching at the spirit before him. 

“Can I save him? Hear me! I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must have been. I promise it, I  _ swear _ . Why show me this, if I am past all hope!”

Javert turned his back on Grantaire then, but he seemed to tremble.

“Good Spirit,” he pursued, “your nature intercedes for me, and pities me, I can tell. Tell me I can change these shadows you have shown me, by an altered life!”

Javert’s trembles became shaking, near convulsions at this point.

“I will honour Christmas in my heart,” he wailed, “and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. I will remember all of the spirits who came to me! I will not shut out the lessons that they teach. Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!”

He sprang to his feet, charged after the spirit, and grabbed him.

And as he did, the world began to shake violently with him, colors flying, the very ground beneath his feet falling away, until---

He was clutching a bedpost.

 

Oh! That bedpost was his own! That room was his own! But most importantly, his time was his own!

There was time yet to make amends.

“The Past, the Present, and the Future?” Grantaire mused. “I’ll live in all of them. I’ll build summer homes there, if I have to.” He got up and out of bed. “And how should I go about it? Just begin making merry? Here and now?” He walked to his dressing mirror and gazed at himself before bursting into laughter. “Well. Why not?”

Why not indeed? His face, still shining with tears he had shed with the spirits, was the picture of joy; his voice, still strained with the shouting pleas he had made to Javert, croaked in its laughter. Grantaire could swear he had never felt so light, a single day in his life.

He certainly couldn’t seem to stop laughing, now that he had started.

“My bed curtains!” he said gleefully, seizing them with unaimed delight. “They’re not torn down at all! They’re here! I’m here! Oh, that I am here, that I have a chance!”

He ran to dress, and in his flight and tremors he made a proper mess of his garments, unable to fit them right at all, and mocking himself gaily for it.

“I don’t know what to do!” cried Grantaire Scrooge, laughing and crying in the same breath; and making a perfect mess of his stockings. “I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy. I am as giddy as a drunken man-- and I would know! Ha ha! A merry Christmas to everybody! A happy New Year to all the world!”   


He had launched into the sitting-room, and was now standing there, breathing deeply.   


“There’s the corner where the Ghost of Christmas Present sat! ” he cried, starting off again, and going round the fireplace. “There’s the window where I went wandering with the Spirits! It’s alright, it’s all true, it all happened. Ha ha ha!”   


And considering his years of lack of practice, it was a splendid laugh indeed.   


“I don’t know what day it is!” said Grantaire with sudden bewilderment. “I don’t know how long I’ve been among the Spirits. What do I know? Nothing! I’m like a baby. Well, so I’m a baby! I have all the cares of one! Hallo! Whoop! Hallo here!”   


His merriment was checked by the churches ringing out, beautiful peals of happy bells! Clashing, clanging, hammering, ding ding dong! Oh, it was glorious, glorious indeed!   


Running to the window, he opened it, and put out his head. The day was free of mist, clear, bright, jovial, stirring, and cold. There was golden sunlight, heavenly sky, sweet fresh air! Oh, glorious! Glorious!

Grantaire glanced below him and saw a young boy, dressed in his Sunday best. “What’s today?” he cried down to him.   


“Pardon?” returned the boy, in a state of bewilderment.   


“What’s today, my fine fellow?” said Grantaire..   


“Today!” he replied. “Why,  _ Christmas Day _ !”   


“Christmas Day! I haven’t missed it. The Spirits have done it all in one night. They can do anything they like. Of course they can.”

“Of course they can,” the boy repeated, confused but game to play along on Christmas.

“Do you know the Poulterer’s on the corner the next street over?” Grantaire inquired.   


“I should hope I do,” replied the lad.   


“An intelligent boy!” Grantaire cried. “A remarkable boy! Do you know whether they’ve sold the prize Turkey that was hanging up there?”   


“What, the one as big as me?”   


“What a delightful boy!” Grantaire was taking great pleasure in the conversation. “Yes, my buck!”   


“It’s hanging there now,” replied the boy.   


“Is it?” said Scrooge. “Go and buy it.”   


“Be serious!” exclaimed the boy.   


“I am  _ wild _ , I am  _ fervent _ !” Grantaire cried. “I promise you, I am in earnest. Go and buy it, and tell ’em to bring it here, that I may give them the direction where to take it. Come back with the man, and I’ll give you a shilling. Come back with him in less than five minutes and I’ll give you half-a-crown!”   


He tossed the turkey’s fee, and the boy was off like a shot.

“That’ll make a fine surprise for Eponine and the little ones!” Grantaire cackled to himself. “Imagine their surprise! From who? Not the ogre! They’ll never believe who sent it. Oh, it is too fun!”

He waited downstairs with the address in hand, and if that hand shook a little, well, so be it! The emotion he felt now was likely making up for a lifetime of its lack, and anyone might have shaken. As he stood there, waiting his arrival, the door knocker caught his eye.   


“This,” he told himself, “is the greatest door knocker that ever was. I don’t think I ever even noticed how grand a knocker it is-- I shall cherish it all my life! Oh, hello,” he said, noticing the Poulterer and the boy’s approach, “here’s the Turkey! Hallo! Whoop! How are you! Merry Christmas!”   


He laughed to meet them, to send the turkey and the boy on their separate ways, to come back into his house and flop into his chair. He laughed right on through shaving, and through dressing himself in his best. At last he got out into the streets. The people were by this time pouring forth, as he had seen them with Courfeyrac, the dear Ghost of Christmas Present. But this time, he took the greatest of pleasures in greeting everyone he met with a delighted smile-- he looked so irresistibly pleasant, that despite his reputation, three or four people even said, “Good morning, sir! A merry Christmas to you!” To which Grantaire responded in kind, to their utter joy and surprise. 

He had not gone far when coming towards him he beheld the kind gentleman, Combeferre, who visited his counting-house the day before, saying, “Do I have the pleasure of addressing Mr. Scrooge?” 

He was nearly horrified, thinking of what expression must cross Combeferre’s face upon meeting him again, but he knew what path lay straight before him, and he was not afraid.   


“My dear sir,” Grantaire said, lighting up to him and taking him by both his hands. “How do you do? I hope you succeeded yesterday, in your kind endeavors. Merry Christmas!”   


The handsome man blinked at him. “Mr. Scrooge?”   


“Yes,” said Grantaire. “The very same. Allow me to ask your pardon. And about that charity donation?”

“Yes?”

Grantaire whispered in his ear.   


“Mr. Scrooge!” cried Combeferre breathlessly. “Such a sum! Are you serious?”   


“Not a farthing less. A great many back-payments are included in it, I assure you.”   


Combeferre clasped his hands again. “I don’t know what to say!”   


“Then don’t say anything, please!” retorted Grantaire.

“I wish there was something I could give you!” Combeferre considered, and then reached into one of his bags. “Would you like a scarf?”

“Heavens, no!” Grantaire laughed, delighted. “I require no receipt!” He stopped suddenly, and scrutinized Combeferre. “But if it is possibly offered, a favor?”

“Name it,” Combeferre  said immediately. Grantaire smiled.

“I search for a man,” he said simply. “With similar interests to your own.”

 

* * *

 

He passed the door a dozen times, pacing to and fro.

“This has been the happiest day I can remember,” he told himself firmly. “If it does not go well, if I am cast out, well! I will have tried.”

Combeferre had known him instantly, that he founded the very group Combeferre represented. Oh happy chance! Did the spirits know? Who could say? Combeferre also said that he had latently fallen ill-- with all his profits going towards caring for those in need, he now lacked care for himself.

At the very least, if he was spurned, he would not let his health fail. What good is coin, if it cannot buy the care of those you-- those you--

Grantaire dashed to the door and rapped smartly on it.

The man in question opened the door, coughing into a kerchief, his gold curls streaked with some handsome gray at the temples only.   


“Grantaire? Grantaire Scrooge?” His shock was not shocking. But the cautious hope was. Grantaire swept the hat off his head.

“To hear you say my name so,” Grantaire said breathlessly. “I couldn't possibly deserve it.”

Enjolras gestured him in the door, and Grantaire stepped closer to him, once, and then again. “Enjolras. Merry Christmas.”

-

Grantaire was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more.

He started by raising Eponine’s wages, as well as giving her a “Christmas Bonus” so generous that she wept, on the spot, and threw her arms around him. To little Gavroche, who did  _ not _ die, he was a dear uncle. He joined with Enjolras and Combeferre in their business of bettering the conditions of the needy, and in time joined with Enjolras at his heart. He became as good a friend and as good a man as the good old city knew.

Oh sure, some laughed to see the change in him, but he let them laugh. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.   


He never did encounter a ghost again, but he hardly needed to. From then on, it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge.

May that be truly said of all of us!

**Author's Note:**

> (All I want for Christmas is a [cup of coffee](https://ko-fi.com/B0B3111IZ). Or someone to give Grantaire a hug. Or both!!)


End file.
